Hunger
by Rubypop
Summary: The sequel to "The Consequences." · It was a chain of events that none of them expected - and the thread of causality continues to unwind. Anders and Fenris forge an uneasy alliance against an enemy greater than themselves: a dark entity from Hawke's past, who has risen up from the bonds of blood magic to claim her as its own.
1. Chapter 1

_More Dragon Age fic by rubypop. A direct continuation of my previous fics, "The Consequences" and "To Bleed the Mage." Read Parts 1 and 2 before continuing (click on my profile!)._

Hunger  
_by rubypop_  
Chapter 1

She had only been a child.

Years ago, years before the Blight, before her time in Kirkwall, Hawke walked the plowed fields of Lothering. She was barefoot, against the chiding of her mother — she loved the texture of the soft, loamy soil between her toes, the cool springtime breeze that carried with it the scent of things growing. She was not an uncommon sight as she wandered the outskirts of the village alone, and the farmers always smiled and greeted her, this dark-headed child who explored with no need of anyone to look after her.

She was searching for goldberries. Her younger brother, ruddy-faced and indignant, had insisted on their existence, and dared her to find them. "The butcher's son told me so," he whined when she taunted his gullibility. "He says they grow out by the Wilds, along the city wall. Solid gold, they are. He says they give you strong magic — you go an' see, if you're so special!"

She and their sister Bethany had been delighting themselves for some time with modest shows of budding magic. At first they reassured the sulking Carver that his own magic still had yet to show, and should he wait long enough he would be rewarded, but as his impatience grew they determined to needle him mercilessly: they fired tiny spurts of flame over the dinner table, and giggled over suddenly-frozen dandelions that shattered at his touch. It was all in good fun, they reasoned, but a sense of competition was brewing, and Hawke readily accepted the challenge to find the fabled goldberries.

She paused now in the field, wriggling her toes with pleasure at the cold soil oozing beneath her feet. She scraped at the dirt with her heels, and when she glanced up again she spied a line of armored men at the village gate.

Instinctively, she ducked her head. She knew without looking that Knight-Captain Clerval was leading them. Her mother had warned them all to stay clear of the Templars, though for many years Hawke could not see why — these great armored men who kept the gates free of bandits, who stayed ever watchful at the doors of the Chantry. And kind-eyed Ser Clerval had rescued the apothecary's children from a bear (she recalled, guiltily, how she had dared them to explore the caves by the river). He'd carried the young sobbing boys back to their mother, and given her the skin of the beast itself.

But Ser Clerval was not always kind. Just weeks ago, she had awoken in the night to screams and shouting. The windows of Roland Tynham's home had lit up with flickering blue light and crackling sparks, and the crash of splintering furniture echoed through the once-silent evening. In mere moments the ruckus had quieted down, and she watched the Templars leave through the front door: one led a frail woman by the manacles at her wrists, and she walked with her head bowed and eyes running with tears. The Templar behind her carried the still, outstretched form of a man whose linen shirt was darkened with blood. When he turned to glance back into the house, the moonlight caught on the ridges of the fallen man's gaping chest — his heart had been cleaved open.

Ser Clerval emerged at last. The sword he carried was dripping blood.

He unrolled a sheet of parchment and nailed it to the door. He then signaled the other Templars and, trembling, she watched them lead the crying woman away.

The following morning, she'd stood clinging to her mother's skirts as they joined a whispering crowd at Roland Tynham's now-vacant hovel.

"'By the order of the Grand Cleric,'" her mother was reading from the parchment on the door, "'and in Andraste's name, the Templar Order declares this home tainted by maleficarum. Roland Tynham is condemned to death for the sacrilege of blood magic. His surviving assets are heretofore seized for dissemination by the Chantry.'

"Blood magic, poppycock," she scoffed then. "Roland was a good man. He would never dabble in the likes of it." She shook her head.

The Templars were marching in a solemn line from the gate, following Ser Clerval, who sat atop an enormous blue roan. Hawke held her breath in the open field.

Not long after the death of Roland Tynham, Hawke was chasing dragonflies by the riverbank. She ran with her skirts bunched in one hand, trying inexpertly to snatch a bottle-green dragonfly straight out of the air. The sky was growing dusky with the sinking sun, and despite her best efforts the river water had splashed all over her dress. Cold and frustrated, she stomped her little foot and fired a bright spark from her outstretched hand. The spark caught the dragonfly and sent it smoldering and spiraling to the pebbled shore.

She beamed in triumph and, when she turned, she saw Ser Clerval making his way toward her from across the field.

She froze. The image of Roland Tynham's opened chest flashed through her mind, and Ser Clerval's dripping sword.

He was smiling gently as he approached, taking his time. His sword rocked at his side. He nodded to her when he reached the shore.

"What are you always doing out here all alone, little one?" he inquired, and though she listened for a hint of suspicion in his voice, she detected none.

"Nothing," she said. She toed the shallow water that ran over her feet. Then, trying to sound tough, she said, "Hunting bears."

His face lit up with surprise and he laughed. "Andraste's sword, they must be running scared," he said.

Her lower lip poked out. She couldn't decide if he was making fun of her.

He crossed the shore and knelt down before her.

"Although I did see something peculiar as I was returning from my patrol," he said.

Her heart jumped. Thinking quickly, she said, "I was catching fireflies."

His dark eyebrows lifted. "Fireflies?"

"Yes, serah."

"Quite an extravagant firefly I saw then, from so far away."

She gripped her skirt. Cold river water dribbled between her fingers.

"It was a really big one," she offered.

He smiled.

"A clever tongue," he chuckled, not unkindly. He ruffled her hair with one hand. "You're one of Leandra Amell's little ones, are you not?"

"Yes, serah," she said.

"What is your name, if I may ask?"

"Marian."

"Marian. A lovely name." His hand lingered on her head, heavy and strong. "Tell me, little Marian. How old are you now?"

She thought for a moment, and counted on her fingers. "Eight," she said.

"Ah. I see. So you are almost a woman."

She stuck out her lip again. "I don't know."

"Why, you are. In just a few short years, I imagine you shall be married."

She made a face, prompting him to laugh again.

"That does not appeal to you, does it?"

She shook her head.

"Well. As do many things, that will change. And a young lady such as yourself goes through a great deal of changes during this time." He tipped his head to one side and leaned toward her conspiratorily. "Have you noticed anything — strange, about yourself lately?"

She shook her head again, slowly this time, not quite knowing what he meant.

"Have you come into any unusual talents, I mean?"

"Oh. Well, certainly." She wished, suddenly, that he weren't so near, that he would remove his hand from her head. "I can jump much farther than I used to," she said, forcing a note of pride into her voice. "All the way across the brook!"

He chuckled. At last he lowered his hand, propping it on his knee. "I see. Jumping brooks and hunting bears. You are quite the force to be reckoned with, my dear."

She fidgeted with her skirt then, and glanced at the sky. "It — it's getting dark," she said. "I've got to go home, or Mummy will be angry with me."

"Just a moment, then," he said, and reached out to take her wrist.

She dodged, sidestepping him, and when her foot came down there was a loud crunch against the pebbles. His eyes dropped, but she was already running back to the village, her heart pounding, leaving him to stare at the scorched remains of the obliterated dragonfly.

Hawke thought back to all of this as she watched the Templars approach.

She began to walk casually, trying to look as though she were daydreaming, as Ser Clerval's gaze alighted on her. She decided to hum, and felt as though a long, strong thread connected them, she and Ser Clerval, drawing them closer together. She stole a glance at him, regretting it instantly. From atop the majestic horse, he caught her eye and nodded. She quickly looked away.

They passed one another, and Hawke hurried past the line of Templars, ducking her head.

She sighed with relief as she crossed the field to the great stone wall. She paused at the first step, feeling a sudden hum in the thread, and looked back.

Ser Clerval was signaling to the other Templars, had pulled his horse to one side as they walked on. Two other Templars joined him, glancing at her.

She took off running, scrambling up the stone steps. One of the Templars shouted; she heard the thunder of hooves.

She raced along the wall, her bare feet smacking against the stones. She crossed the bridge — and heard rattling armor, heavy boots on wooden planks. She could not outrun them.

Before her stretched the Wilds — miles of wilderness and tangled brush that her mother had strictly forbidden her from going near. "It's 'cause of the Witch of the Wilds," Bethany would whisper. "She'll gobble you up, she will!"

She was ready to face any witch, if it meant escaping poor Roland Tynham's fate.

She sprang forward, sliding down a slope choked with nettles, which tore at her arms and legs. The Templars were shouting, commanding her to stop, she dove into a tangle of brambles, wriggling between the dark, thick branches.

She glanced back. They were right behind her — Ser Clerval's horse reared up at the brambles, tossing its jet-black mane. Ser Clerval had drawn his sword, was chopping now at the thorns. Hawke hit the ground and crawled away, her fingernails scraping through the dirt.

"Leave me alone!" she cried.

Hooves pounded the ground behind her. She spun onto her back and thrust both hands into the air.

Flames erupted from her fingers, sudden and hot, surprising even her. The horse reared again, braying, and Ser Clerval yanked the reigns as he struggled to control it.

"She is a mage!" one of the Templars called out.

The flames died too soon — she still knew too little of this mysterious power — and she had only singed the horse, could smell the acrid burning of its smoke-blue mane. She snatched thorns from her hair and squirmed through the brush.

"Do not run!" Ser Clerval said, hacking away the remaining brambles. "No harm will come to you, little one."

"You're lying!" she cried. She shoved herself from the ground and bolted away.

The other two Templars had burst through the brush, thorns glancing from their armor, and they gave chase. She flung a spark of flame at the nettles beneath her feet, and they ignited. She turned a corner, glancing back — the Templars had extended their hands, whispering spells of their own to cleanse the fire with ease.

When she turned back around, Ser Clerval's horse thundered to the ground before her. Her feet skidded in the dirt; he must have circled around her when she was distracted, had leaped from a rocky hillside without her even seeing.

He had raised a hand, approaching her.

"You must cease this," he said firmly. "Else you set light to the whole of the Wilds."

"I don't want to die," she said.

"You will not," he said, though he did not sheathe his sword. "We will not harm you. But you must return with us."

"Liar," she stammered. "You — you killed Ser Roland. You stabbed his heart."

Ser Clerval's face softened at the tremor in her voice.

"Mother says — Mother says the Templars hurt us. They steal away children and lock us up and they kill us. And Ser Roland . . . he never did anything wrong."

The nettles rustled behind her. The other Templars stood waiting.

"Your magic is untrained," Ser Clerval said carefully, "and new. I would not lie to you, little one: no harm will come to you. Roland Tynham was a maleficar — he was not a good mage like yourself. He tried to ensnare us with blood magic —"

"I saw fire that night," she said. "Fire and ice."

She heard one of the Templars take a step, and Ser Clerval raised his hand again, silently.

"There is nothing you can do, little Marian, save heed my words. There are plenty of children at the Circle. It is safe there, for your kind."

"No," she said. "I won't go."

Ser Clerval pursed his lips for a moment, looking rueful. He nodded then to the Templars, who went to grab her.

She panicked, flung out her arms, and the earth rumbled beneath them, shifting, and it ruptured, throwing the two Templars off of their feet. A chasm opened behind her, collapsing, as the earth gathered into a sharp spear that erupted beneath Ser Clerval.

It was a moment in time that was seared into her memory. The horse reared up, and the spear of earth caught it, gouging it between the ribs. She heard the muted thud of penetrated muscle, the crack of splitting bone. And the horse screamed — a terrible, squealing wail of agony that drove her little fists to her ears. The smell of blood hit her — so much blood, more than she had ever seen — as Ser Clerval was thrown, striking the gnarled base of a tree. The horse was thrashing against the earthen spike, its magnificent coat speckled with red, and foam dropped from its mouth, flung every which way.

Horrified, she fled, caring not if they saw where she went, wanting nothing more than to leave this place, to run until she heard the dying animal's cries no more.

Her surroundings whipped by in a blur. She did not know which direction she had taken, could not tell if she ran farther into the Wilds or would somehow find her way back home. She wondered, vaguely, if she had killed Ser Clerval, and found that she did not care if she had.

#

On and on she ran, twisting and turning through the wilderness, until the sky had begun to darken, and she could run no more. Her little chest heaved, and she shuddered with exhaustion. Scratches covered her arms and legs from the reaching nettles; mud and calluses marred her aching feet. She paused for breath by an overgrown tree and glanced around, hoping to glimpse the stone wall through the trees. There was nothing beyond the prison of wilderness surrounding her.

She squatted to the ground, hugging her knees. She would have cried, if she were prone to such a thing; but instead she silently despaired, wondering if the Templars still searched for her, or — worse yet — if they had returned to Lothering for her family.

She was unaccustomed to such guilt and dread, and they pierced her heart terribly. She chastised herself for mentioning her mother, for speaking to Ser Clerval at all. How stupid I must be, she thought, for chasing dragonflies in the first place. How could she be so careless, so childish? Was she not almost a woman? She buried her face in her hands.

Night descended with a chilling pall. She wandered aimlessly, utterly lost. She could scarcely see a thing, and was too consumed by dread to light a torch lest they see her. And so on she went, convinced she was going in circles, jumping at every sound, the snap of a twig, the buzz of insects.

She came to a cave, and felt along its lip with her fingers. The thought of sleep was tantalizing; the lure of a hiding place gave her hope. She went cautiously inside, plunging now into absolute darkness.

#

Within the cave, she smelled old earth, still water, the encroaching odor of niter.

She heard distant echoes of things that dripped, the scratching of some small creature, the hesitant shush of her own bare footfalls.

She saw a muted blue glow in the distance.

She went toward it, mystified. It was faint, seemed to come from very far away — but it was there, yes, a gentle suffusion of light unlike anything she had ever seen, save for the emissions of magic that had lit up Roland Tynham's windows.

Magic, she thought. Surely there was something for her here, some magical essence that could help her?

She took another step, and found herself stumbling. Her heel had come to rest on a fragile shelf of rock, and beneath her toes there was nothing. The rock was crumbling, her balance lost. She was falling now, and threw out both hands to catch herself, but there was nothing, nothing now, she was falling. Her shoulder struck a wall as she dropped, and within seconds she hit the ground, sprawling on water-slick rock.

She grunted and slumped down, dizzy, uncertain of how far she had fallen.

She shivered. Her palms slid against the rock as she pushed herself up. Her head pounded so loudly that she wondered how hard she had hit it — found she couldn't be sure.

When she turned, she saw two bright lights, like eyes, peering at her from the darkness.


	2. Chapter 2

Hunger  
_by rubypop_  
Chapter 2

Fenris crawled, could do nothing more than crawl, along the baseboard of Hawke's bedchamber, feeling the wall with shaking hands. He picked through splinters and shards of debris, shredded wallpaper and daggers of glass. He muttered to himself, counting out paces that he could not take, checking for crevices, hollow spots, something, anything to indicate the hidden recess that he knew was there, behind which was a passage underground, and a path to Darktown, the only place he could think of to go.

#

Hawke held her head there in the blackness of the cavern, staring back at the white glowing eyes. They did not blink, and their gaze was penetrating, all-seeing, immobile.

She heard then, when the pounding in her head had ceased, the deep reverberations of something breathing.

She did not move from the dripping boulder, and dared not look away. She swallowed hard, gathered her courage.

"Hello?" she called out, though quietly, and her voice carried on the air, echoing against the rock walls. "Is someone there?"

The eyes stared. The breathing, slow and even, continued.

Then, a voice:

"Hello there, little thing."

The voice was sonorous and rumbling, so low in pitch that its words were nearly indistinguishable. She felt a deep vibration run through her, as subtle and unsettling as the tremors from some distant earthquake, and it gave her an odd sense of being physically sick.

She hugged herself tightly. "Who — who are you?"

A long pause.

"A friend," said the voice.

"You sound — scary," she said.

A soft chuckle then, that quivered the rock underneath her.

"I can't see you," she said.

The eyes glinted, and from beneath them a slow light grew.

A long shape emerged from the darkness, indistinct and pooled in shadow, what appeared to be a man, but was not. She saw wide shoulders behind a bowed head, flesh that shimmered like nacre, long arms, impossibly long. A smooth chest, and beneath it the dramatic jut of ribs. Its abdomen was a cavity, emaciated, it seemed hollow to her, as though no internal organs could possibly be housed within. And between the legs she saw the dark genitals, that mysterious male organ that she had glimpsed only on farm animals and wild beasts, that brought her a curious shame now to see, as though she should not have.

The creature sat cross-legged, its arms trailing on the ground, hands folded — but they were not hands, she could see this clearly for the dim light that bloomed from them. They were claws, large gnarled things much too big for their skinny arms, with powerful fingers that curled into thick, barbed points.

The creature lifted his head, and she saw a startlingly human face, save for the unblinking white eyes.

"What is your name, little thing?" he said, his rumbling voice sounding tired.

"Marian," she answered, was too afraid not to answer.

He stared at her. His broad chest, so incongruous to the cavernous stomach, the skinny arms, moved gently as he breathed.

"Wh-what's your name?" she stammered.

He tilted his head. The shadows shifted; she saw now that he had not hair, but a bristling spray of spikes that rose from the crest of his brow like a myriad of horns. When his lips parted, she saw long, pointed teeth.

"Hunger," he said.

They gazed at one another in silence. She shivered in the damp chill. She wondered how someone with so human a face could have so bizarre a body, proportions so wrong that they confounded her merely by looking. But as she observed him, she began to feel less afraid — in some way, he seemed sad to her, as though he were just as lost and weary as she.

"Do you live here?" she asked. "Is this cave your home?"

He shook his head slowly.

"Why are you here?" she said.

A low rumble resounded through the chamber, as though the entirety of the cave sighed in resignation. He lifted his claws, and the light with them, and he raised his head.

A thin, dark vine was lashed about his black neck, stretching taut to the wall beside him. The vine had been wrapped, tighter than a ship's rigging, around a boulder that jutted from the wall. A small brass pin gleamed in the light, stuck fast into the knotted vine.

"You're a prisoner?" she said.

He lowered his head and nodded.

"Have you been here for a long time?"

He nodded again.

"Did someone do that to you for a reason? Because you did something bad?"

He shook his head.

She hugged her knees to her chest.

"Where did you come from, little thing?" he asked her then.

"Outside," she said softly. "A village outside the Wilds. I'm lost. Some — some bad men chased me."

"I see," he said, and said nothing more.

She sat, shivering, on the boulder for some time. The creature remained by the wall, tethered fast, with his great head bowed. The pair of lights that were his eyes had gone out, and she wondered if he had fallen asleep, though the level cadence of his breathing went on, uninterrupted.

She sneezed suddenly, and his eyes opened again.

"I'm sorry," she said, without knowing why.

He chuckled. She glanced at him shyly, saw his hands working, though at what she could not tell.

"Tell me, little thing," he said then, as one set of his claw-tipped fingers picked over his other palm. "Are you frightened?"

She shook her head, although she was, very much so. "No."

"You are not? Truly?"

"No, serah."

He chuckled again, though whether it was at the honorific she used or the obvious lie, it was unclear.

"And what of the bad men that pursue you?"

"They don't scare me," she said, staring back into those strange eyes. "But . . ."

He waited for her to continue.

"But I am afraid that, if they do not find me, they'll — they'll get my brother and sister and my mummy."

"And why is that, little thing?"

"I did something bad."

He lifted his head once more, gently, and offered his hands. His arms, with their odd length, stretched a great distance, and he reached much more closely to her than she'd thought he could.

His fingers opened, and upon his smooth glossy palm was a tiny wooden horse.

"Did you make that?" she whispered.

He gestured with his hands: take it, take it.

Tentatively she reached out. His great curving claws formed an intimidating barrier around the little horse, and they gleamed in the low light, so close that she could see every detail of the stinger-like barbs at their ends. They parted when her little hand came near, and she had a sudden vision of them snapping shut, of being dragged back into the darkness, but his fearsome claws remained still, and she took the wooden horse without incident.

It was rudely carved, clearly the result of those thick talons, though inured with detail, and its resemblance to Ser Clerval's great roan was not lost on her.

"How did you know?" she murmured.

He retracted his hands, and tapped one claw against the side of his head.

"I walk the Fade, little thing," he said.

She clutched the horse.

"Your thoughts weigh heavily," he went on, "on this side of the Veil, and the next."

"Are you a demon?" she whispered.

He smiled.

Her words quivered. "Somebody tied you up here for a reason."

"And I presume that someone chased you to this place for a reason as well, little thing," he said lightly.

"They —" she said, and swallowed her words. The rough edges of the wooden figure bit into her palm.

"The Templars," he offered.

She began to tremble.

"Little mage," he said.

"I —" She groped for words, could find only few. "I — I ran from them. They were going to — to kill me, or lock me up in a tower. I didn't mean to hurt anybody."

"Of course not," the creature said, with a note of pity.

"And now — they — oh." She cast her eyes upward, into the dark pit from which she'd fallen. "Oh, I hope they're still searching for me," she said softly. "I hope they haven't gone back. They must be . . . terribly angry with me. And if Ser Clerval is dead . . ." She fell silent at the horror of it.

"And I was glad," she said at last. "I was glad to think I had killed him."

The creature's spiked head listed from side to side. "Do not fear, little thing," he said. "Do not fear."

Her eyes dropped to his.

"The Templar of which you speak still lives," he said. "He and his men wander the Wilds even now."

"Is it true?" she said, her heart giving a flutter. "They haven't turned back?"

"Well. For three lyrium-consuming mage-hunters, a pup such as yourself is not difficult to track, one might say." He looked up, as though his gaze penetrated the very ceiling. "Yes. They are nearby."

She felt a momentary surge of relief, followed instantly by an influx of dread.

"What can I do," she whispered, "when they find me?"

She pulled her knees to her chest, as though she could pull herself smaller, shrink into herself and disappear.

Silence then, punctuated by the minor clicking of the creature's claws. She buried her face into her arms, and did not look up again until she sensed movement.

The creature had extended his hands once more. He held out three wooden figures — little soldiers, each wearing a miniature suit of armor and carrying a tiny sword.

She couldn't help but smile as she took them, one by one, from between the parting black claws.

"Maker's breath," she said with delight. "The Templars."

"See how tiny they are," the creature said, "even when held in your little hands?"

She giggled at the absurdity of it. Three little Templars, small enough to fit in the palm of her hand. Harmless dolls, no more than playthings now.

"They're cute," she said. Then, "Thank you."

The creature had folded his hands again. He nodded to her.

She studied the figures for a moment, and singled one out as Ser Clerval — for it was the only one with a tiny beard — and she pretended to make him walk, moving him across the curve of her knee.

"My, but the little mage has grown big," the creature mused. "They do not stand a chance."

She laughed.

She sat playing with the figures, making them scamper to and fro across the boulder, and dueling with their little swords, as the creature looked on.

He leaned his head to one side, away from the tethered boulder, as though testing the vine.

"Little thing," he said then, gesturing with one hand.

She looked up at him.

"To me," he said.

She was holding Ser Clerval aloft, about to place him on the back of his resurrected steed. She did not move from her perch.

His fingers paused, then motioned once again. "Little thing," he repeated, sweetly. "Why do you hesitate?"

"You're," she said slowly, "you're a demon."

"Am I?"

"Your name. You said your name was Hunger."

He smiled.

"Mummy told me," she said, "that demons . . . they're people's desires made real. Bad desires. Things so strong that people do evil because of them." She named them off her little fingers. "Rage, lust, pride, sloth . . . and hunger."

"A clever child," he said. "A learned child."

"You must have hurt someone," she said, "to end up here."

"As did you," he said mildly.

"I didn't," she stammered, then, glancing at the horse figurine in her hand, "I mean, I didn't mean to . . ."

"Many things are said of my kind," he murmured, "that are simply untrue. Slanderous. Many things said, too, of mages, who are then locked up, put to sword. A tragedy, yes?"

She fidgeted with the dolls.

She heard, then, a distant echo — far-off clamoring steps, exchanging voices.

Hunger lifted his eyes. She stiffened with fear.

"They've found you, little thing," he said.

She scrambled from the boulder, slipped on the condensation. She fell.

He reached out and caught her.

She supressed a yelp of surprise, and he drew her toward him. His large hands gripped her easily, and gently, the claws slick and yielding to her form, and never did their barbs meet her flesh. He lowered her to the rocky floor, huddling her against the hollow cavity of his middle.

"You are a fellow Fade walker," he whispered. "You are a friend."

The barbs ran through her hair.

The voices, the footsteps were growing louder.

"You must do something for me," he said.

She twisted about and stared up at him. The vine stretched, strained against his neck.

"You must pull the charm from the rock," he said, so quietly, his voice the faintest rumble now, the distant shifting of earth. "You must release me."

Her eyes traveled the length of the vine, and settled on the brass pin that pierced the boulder.

"I," she stammered.

A shout from above — Ser Clerval's, close now, distinct.

"I will protect you," he said, and it was strange how delicate those thick claws had become, how gentle were the great fingers that stroked her cheeks. "I will let no harm come to you."

She could see torchlight now, it emanated from the pit overheard, along with voices that shouted inquiries.

"Marian," called Ser Clerval from above.

"Release me," Hunger said, and he hunched down over her, he whispered now in her little ear, "and I shall owe you a great debt. And I shall give you a gift — one that would guarantee your own freedom for ever."

She pushed him away. She dove for the boulder and plucked the pin from the knotted vine.

The tether snapped back from the rock, so quickly that she instinctively shielded her face, and behind her Hunger had lunged forward, yanking the vine from his neck. He scooped her up in one arm and bounded to the dripping boulder where the wooden Templars lay scattered. Hawke clutched the tiny horse as she clung to his chest. His smooth flesh was startlingly hot now against hers, felt likely to burn her, and she broke out in a fevered sweat.

His long arm reached up, up into the pit from which she had fallen, and his claws bored easily into the solid rock, and he lifted himself at once, ascending.

She saw the Templars then, all three of them, as Hunger burst over the lip of the pit, and the shock on their faces was almost comical, though laughter was far from her mind now. And how bizarre a sight it must have been, how unexpected to the Templars who'd pursued a mere child of eight, and saw her now clinging to this heaving beast with eyes like blazing torches.

"Andraste preserve us!" one of them cried. "An abomination!"

One of the great claws lashed out and struck the closest Templar. In a brilliant display of red the barbs caught the flesh at his throat and ripped in an upward arc. The flesh tore — it shredded, she realized, for such claws were not capable of slicing cleanly — and blood wet the man's neck at once, spattered in thick drops across his silver chestplate. He fell, gurgling, and Hawke was horrified to see the meat-red muscles in his throat working, the gobs of flesh that hung like tattered fabric from his jaw.

"Oh, Maker," she stuttered. "Oh, Maker, oh."

Hunger's claw came down, wet and shining. With one liquid movement he pivoted and deposited her gently on the ground. He turned back just as Ser Clerval and the remaining Templar charged.

He caught Ser Clerval's sword in mid-swing, and though the sharp edge bit into his palm he gripped it savagely in his claws. He knocked back the second sword with his elbow and seized the Templar, lifting him from the ground.

She heard his laughter all around her, it shook through the walls, raucous, joyous.

The Templar thrashed, his armor rattling. Hunger's lips had pulled away from his long teeth, stretching wide, wider. He threw Ser Clerval back, who fell still gripping his sword, and Hawke looked on in terror as the demon's mouth opened, kept opening, his jaw seemed to unhinge and the yellow teeth glinted like knives, they could have been as long as her arm now. And the Templar screamed, oh, how pitifully he screamed, as he was lifted to that great mouth, and the fearsome teeth snapped shut.

Hawke shrank back against the wall, staring between her little fingers. From behind him she saw Hunger lower the man, saw the armored legs twitching, the streams of hot fragrant blood, and then the great dark cavity where the man's shoulder should have been, the chestplate bent and ripped away, exposed ribs and splintered bone.

She heard the terrible grinding of powerful jaws, and glimpsed the dangling human arm that swung free from the demon's mouth.

She slumped forward in what was nearly a dead faint.

Ser Clerval had bellowed a name, surely it was the name of that poor wretch whose eyes now stared, distant and cloudy, up at nothing, as Hunger leaned down again and ran a long, dark tongue along the ruined shoulder, lapping up the sumptuous blood.

"Oh, please," she whispered, though to whom she knew not.

She met Ser Clerval's eyes for the briefest moment — they were blue, pale blue, and she saw in them that hint of softness he'd betrayed in the Wilds, and she wondered how she must look, pale and shivering in the wake of this great monster.

"You will release him!" Ser Clerval cried then, launching from the floor in a fearless sprint, his sword held aloft.

Hunger turned to him, swallowing flesh and nerves and bone. She saw, from this angle, how his face had lost any resemblance of humanity — may never had truly looked human at all — and instead it was now twisted and gnarled and grinning. He flung down the maimed wretch, his arm no longer emaciated and lithe, but thick and roped with muscle.

He ducked low, and Ser Clerval's sword glanced from the chitinous spines on his head.

He snatched with one hand and five barbed points pierced Ser Clerval's back, his ribs.

He lifted Ser Clerval from the floor, plucking away the sword from his hand as though it were a mere toy.

Hawke moaned, covering her eyes.

"Marian!"

She looked up.

Ser Clerval had twisted toward her, was staring at her over the rise of Hunger's shoulder. Blood dotted his bearded mouth in a fine spray. The five claws were buried deep, had penetrated his armor with ease.

"I'm sorry," she found herself whispering. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

"Marian," he said again, and his face was suddenly paling, going slate gray. "You must run. Run now, far from here, far from him . . ."

Hunger's great jaws sprang apart and he howled with laughter.

"Run to your mother's arms," Ser Clerval went on. "Go! I will not let him come for you."

"The Templar lies, little thing," Hunger crowed. "He cares nothing for you. He desires only to see your kind locked away, slaughtered and trampled underfoot, until none are left to walk free."

"This creature is an abomination," Ser Clerval said firmly, though his voice was growing weak. "Be strong, you must be strong. Do not give in to him. Do not believe the things he says."

"Silence, fool!"

"Safeguard yourself," Ser Clerval said. "For the worst things he can take from you are your body and mind."

Hunger lunged forward, his jaws stretching wide. Ser Clerval held her gaze as that razored maw descended over him.

He must have only whispered them, though she could swear that she heard his final words loud and clear.

"Don't look," he said.

The mouth closed over his head.


	3. Chapter 3

Hunger  
_by rubypop_  
Chapter 3

In Darktown, the sick and the needy had no time to wait on Anders's troubles. He mended wounds and mixed medications with his mind abuzz and his heart dropping in his chest. He could not help but welcome the distraction of his work, though it tinged him with guilt to think of his patients in this way. It was good to keep his hands busy, despite how they sometimes trembled when his thoughts wandered to other things.

He found himself reciting, silently, what he might say to her when he saw her next. Heartfelt excuses, sincere confessions, bold lies, they all spun wildly in his head: my love, you do not understand, my love, Justice has been out of control, my love, he would have killed you, he would have killed you, he would have killed you.

Heat rose in his blood as he recalled the look of horror on her face, the force of her hands as she shoved him away to save such a man's life.

And then just as quickly the heat drained from him. What must she think of me? he wondered with despair. What must she think now, after stumbling upon such a scene?

He dared not guess whether Fenris had lived or died. He'd cut the man's jugular with precision. He knew well the point at which even magic could save no one.

#

At midday a beggar came seeking his care, a young woman draped in filth and rags. Anders saw, as he gently scraped the mask of grime from her face, that she was quite beautiful, her eyes large and clear, her lips lovely, though chapped, and full. He sensed within her an aching gratitude that stirred some deeply-buried fragment of himself. He realized, as he inspected the running sores at the base of her neck, and lightly touched her with his fingertips, that she reminded him of someone. Someone from long ago, back when the walls of the Circle had been his home, back when secret trysts among its prisoners were common and numerous. He found, with a flush of shame, that he could not remember her name, that comely mage who had slipped his hand into her robes one night in the deserted chapel, who had pressed his fingers to the soft dampness between her legs and smiled, tipping back her head to meet his gaze, just as this young beggar looked at him now.

His heart pounded then. He recalled the sensation of opening her lips with careful fingers, the velvety wetness therein. How she'd rocked gently against him, sighing in his ear.

He took a breath, guiltily quashing the memory, and he lifted his hands from the woman's throat, perhaps a bit too quickly, for he realized that they were lingering there. He turned away from her and busied himself grinding poultices, silently chastising himself, and then a quiet disgust rippled through him, that he felt as strongly as the insistent erection beneath his robes, disgust which he knew, without doubt, stemmed from the discomfort of the Fade-born spirit that he housed within.

#

He could scarcely look the beggar-girl in the eye when her treatment was done, when he sent her away with ointments, bandages, recommendations of rest and fresh water. She hesitated at the clinic entrance, staring longingly at the blankets that he had laid out for bedridden patients, but still he sent her away, shaking his head. He could not have her here in the dark privacy of night.

More patients awaited him, but he slipped into the back room of the clinic, carrying the carved wooden basin with him. He sat on the meager bed and splashed his face with cold water, trying to rid himself of these prurient memories, to calm Justice's restless shifting.

I am a different man than I once was, he told himself. And how true it was. It seemed an entirely different lifetime, back when he'd flee the Circle on a lark, when he'd loved many women, unconcerned with the plights of the world. Hazier still were the memories of those brief days when he and Justice had met as two instead of one, how Justice had often scolded him for his flippancy, for loving so easily, for ignoring the misfortunes of his fellow mages in exchange for an aimless life of wandering freedom.

And now he was a different man. They had both changed, though he could not be sure who had had the greater impact on whom. Anders was a man now steeped in the rigors of this joined life, and it felt at times like a constant battle, though admittedly he derived some gratification from it. Truly he could call himself many things: Grey Warden, clinician, a coagent of justice seeking the liberation of his kind.

A murderer, now, in his own right, who'd slain a man bound and helpless.

Water dripped from his eyelashes, his chin, the tip of his nose. His hands scooped into the basin and he splashed his face again. He sat staring at the wall, could see that gagged and blindfolded face there, the dark throat slit wide. He shook his head, and drops scattered from his face.

There came a low knocking then, sudden and muffled, from the wall behind him.

He turned.

Silence for a moment, and then the knocking sounded again, louder and more insistent. It came, without doubt, from the hidden door just behind the bed.

He rose, setting aside the basin of water. His pulse quickened — very few knew of the passage at the rear of the clinic, the one that snaked behind the walls of Darktown to the matching egress in the Hawke manor. He'd used it at times to smuggle refugees from the Gallows, but no apostate would be traveling to him on their own. He thought, vaguely, that it must be Hawke, surely she had come to see him now — but why would she knock, or forego the main entrance altogether?

He thought of the Templars at the Gallows, the close calls he'd risked for so many, and reached for his staff, sliding the bed from the wall.

The knock came again. It echoed from the base of the wall, low to the ground. He hefted his staff and eased his fingers into the crevice along the hidden door. He sucked in his breath and drew the door from the wall.

He saw first the shadowed chasm within, the narrow brick-lined passage that he'd traveled so many times. He heard the slightest groan, and his gaze dropped to the floor.

A dark-skinned hand was reaching for him, it was caked with blood, criss-crossed with lines of shining silver.

A shock of white hair, reddened staring eyes.

A long, pale, ridged scar across the neck, from ear-to-ear.

"Fenris," Anders murmured, not believing.

"She's gone," Fenris sputtered, his voice weak, his bloodied hand reaching. "She's gone, she's gone."

#

Before long he had cleared out the clinic, doing what he could for those patients whose needs were immediate, distributing the potions he had already prepared, apologizing vaguely when he shut the front door at last and turned the lock.

Fenris had slumped against the supply chest, picking through glass bottles of disinfectants and anodynes. Anders left him to it, and dropped down on the edge of the straw bed, distraught. He buried his face in his hands, and his shoulders heaved.

From the floor Fenris looked up at him, yanking the stopper from a bottle with his teeth.

"Oh, Marian," Anders moaned. "Marian."

He heard the splash of disinfectant on Fenris's arm.

"Maker's breath," Fenris hissed, and from the corner of his eye Anders saw him cringe.

He remained in the back room, his eyes blurring with tears, as Fenris mopped at the wounds on his arm.

"My love," he cried. "My beloved."

"Andraste's sword, pull yourself together," Fenris said.

"Do not test me!" Anders roared. He lurched from the bed with a start. "Do not — not when you are the one who has caused all of this — I swear on my life I shall finish what I started."

Fenris's face darkened, and despite his scowl he said no more.

Anders flung out an arm, and then because he had not expected this lack of response he flung it out again, and then he began to pace from one side of the clinic to the other.

"And you are sure of what happened?" he uttered, his mind racing.

"Yes," Fenris mumbled.

"You are absolutely sure? Your mind wasn't muddled, you — you weren't disoriented from the loss of blood —"

"I saw the bloody demon with my own eyes!" Fenris shouted. "It tore half the house apart just to get to her! She knew it, too, she'd said —" His voice grew quieter, and he sat back, looking nearly stunned by exhaustion. "She'd said, 'I didn't think he would come for me this soon.'"

Anders squeezed his eyes shut, for they burned suddenly with tears.

"You know who it is, too," Fenris said, his words knife-edged and accusatory. "You know, you have known — and you've done nothing —"

"Silence, fool, be silent!" Anders cried, and it was not just Anders then but the booming unbounded fury of Justice, and searing cold flame erupted from him then, pealing from his flesh and bones and the very membranes of his eyes, until he fought it back, quelling the embattled spirit at once.

He stood very still, panting, as Fenris glared at him from the floor.

"How dare you," he said then. "How dare you even breathe the words, when you know nothing, absolutely nothing."

"This was no secret she kept from you," Fenris said. "Shall I speak of it plainly, then? Those scars on her body: she'd had them for some time."

Anders bit down on the inside of his cheek, felt the sharp blossom of pain, kept biting.

"They were the work of a demon," Fenris went on, his voice rising. "That very same demon. She'd dealt with it, she'd — she'd courted it. It — it kissed her, touched her —"

Anders let out an agonized wail and turned away, grinding his knuckles to his forehead as though he could shut out the sound of Fenris's words.

"You can't pretend it didn't happen!" Fenris was shouting now. Anders heard the creak of his hide tunic as he rose from the floor. "You can't shut your eyes and plug up your ears. She's gone, Anders. And it's all your doing —"

"My doing?" Anders spun back around, and though he shed a spate of blue light he kept the raging spirit in check. "You beast, you lunatic. I had nothing at all to do —"

"It took her because of you!" Fenris cried. "It came to collect her because — it only let me live because —" His voice dropped suddenly, and his eyes settled on some great distance. "It knew my face," he murmured. "She — it said to me — it said that it would not kill me, not after she had given so much to save my life."

"You're lying," Anders said. "She didn't, she would not, not after what you'd done."

"How else did she find me?" Fenris extended his arms, shrugged his shoulders in a gesture that seemed almost helpless. "How else did she arrive at the very moment that you — that you —"

"Enough!" Anders raised a hand as though to ward him off, as though to send him away. "No more, I need to think."

"No, you will listen, and you will answer me." Fenris came forward then, his face twisting, angry. "The demon took her, but I know she must still live. You must tell me everything that you know about it, about the history between the two of them, no matter how much it pains you. Your blubbering will do nothing to save her. We must act —"

Anders seized him then by the collar, crushing the black hide in his fingers. An overwhelming hatred was boiling now in his brain, flashes of memory, the image of Hawke stumbling into the clinic, her bleeding neck, the tremors in her voice as she answered his careful questions, the startling confusion he'd felt when she'd urged him, over and over, to do nothing, to quiet Justice's vengeful rampage.

"You will say nothing more," he said. "You are in my stead. Remember this: in those last few moments, I drove Justice off. Remember what he put you through. I control him. And now, right at this moment, you are at my mercy."

Fenris's face contorted. His mouth worked as though he meant to speak, and then thought better of it, and he exhaled, deeply, through his nose.

Anders held him for a moment more, and then released him, and the two stood facing one another.

"I shall never forgive you," Anders said. "Do not forget that."

Fenris merely glared.

"I shall tell you what I know because we need to work quickly, and find out where the demon has taken her. For your part, you must rest, and allow your wounds to heal. Though it galls me," and here Anders grit his teeth for a second, "I shall treat you."

"You will not touch me," Fenris growled. "No one touches me. I have dressed wounds before. I will do it."

"Fine. If you must continue to be petulant, I shall leave you to it." Anders turned to pace again across the clinic, waving a hand at his supplies. "Use what you need. But you will not speak again, not while I am explaining this to you."

Fenris returned to the supply chest, and rummaged through the bottles once more.

Anders crossed the room, wrung his hands, crossed again. He took a deep breath, uncertain of where to begin.

"I have never met this demon," he said slowly, "though I do know it has been present in her life for as long as I've known her. She has never spoken of it much, would tell me very little when I asked, and, eventually, because her discomfort over the matter became too great, I simply . . . stopped asking.

"I knew at once what the scars meant," he said. "I knew . . . it was our first night together."

The rattling at the supply chest slowed, and he sensed the faint scowl that darkened Fenris's face.

"By that point, her blood magic was no secret," he went on. "Truly, it's impossible to hide such a thing. But I had chosen to ignore the implications of it —"

"That there are no blood mages naturally born," Fenris muttered. "That such magic is only gifted — no, bargained for. A power never given for free."

"I had thought — I had hoped — that Marian's part in the exchange was long past, that it lay buried in some minor happenstance of little consequence. But on that night, I told her that I loved her."

Fenris had grown still. Anders risked a glance his way; he sat staring into the supply chest, his jaw firmly set.

"She was quiet, she did not respond at first. I feared that she'd rejected me, that I'd said too much, gone too far. And there was fear in her eyes as well, but a different sort: it made my blood run cold. I realized then that there was something greater involved, but she would not say, no, she would not."

He took a shaky breath "The demon, it is . . . a jealous entity. It visited her that night."

Fenris's head turned.

"It comes to her in dreams," Anders explained. "When the Veil is thin. It knew of me, it was. Angry with her. She awoke drenched in cold sweat. Shaking and pale. She clung to me like a child.

"It was many nights, no, weeks later, when she finally told me. The demon . . . when they'd met . . ." And here he swallowed, and swallowed again, for the taste in his mouth had thickened his words, and they stuck, fast, in his throat.

"She had only been a child," he said, his voice rising and shuddering so that his words ended at last in a beleaguered sob.

#

Hawke sat drenched in the smell of freshly-opened things, staring at the wall. It was a mixture of odors both familiar and strange to her: the bitter tang of sweat, the smothering rich brassiness of blood, and then bile, thick and gritty coupled with the eye-watering ammonia sting of spilled bladders.

It took much longer for Hunger to devour them than she would have expected. The ecstatic furor with which he'd dispatched the Templars was now replaced with a slow sweetness. She did not watch, but listened to the dismemberment of the corpses, the sensuous cracking of ribs and sinking of teeth. She imagined, as she struggled not to picture it, that he ate daintily, holding morsels with just the tips of his claws, patting his black lips politely after each bite, and now she felt giddy at the thought, giddy and quite near to cracking.

After a great deal of time had passed, and Hawke had not moved from her place at the wall, long fingers glided over her head, touching her tenderly. She started; she'd sunk into such a deep reverie that she'd been nearly comatose, her thoughts unspooling like the frayed end of a thread. She hadn't even heard him approach her, and he crouched behind her now, combing through her hair and stroking her cheek. She thought, maddeningly, that he must have licked his fingers clean.

"Look at me, little thing," he cooed.

She imagined desiccated remains, ravaged entrails, a little pile of human teeth like discarded pearls. She did not turn

"Little thing," he said again, sounding hurt, thought it was a farce, the very thought of it made her want to laugh, and laugh, and keep laughing.

She tilted her head to the slightest degree, her eyes still trained on the wall. His great hand curled over her shoulder and eased her around, and she went without protest, unfocusing her gaze so that the space behind him blurred into incomprehensible shadow.

His white eyes bored into her.

She had not seen him so close, so still. Indubitably he had changed from the sad, weary prisoner that she had met before. His black flesh was no longer smooth and nacreous, but gnarled and spiked and formidable. His lips had pulled back from his long yellow teeth, endowing him with a perpetual grin. The bristling spikes at his crown had lengthened and grown in number. His once-cavernous stomach, now full, had become distended and firm.

He cradled her face with surprising delicacy. His blank eyes appeared to be studying her.

"How pale you are," he said, the rumble of his voice sinking into a lower, gentler register.

She stared at him emptily.

"You are not well," he said.

That great mouth, she kept thinking. They disappeared into that great mouth, behind those long teeth. All three of them are there, inside him.

"Do not fret," he said. "Do not worry, little thing. Soon you shall return home."

He's lying, she thought. He's lying. He's lying. He's lying.

"In return for your kindness," he said sweetly, "a gift."

He took her by the wrist, pale and reedy against his massive palm. One of his claws slid across the heel of her hand, and then it traced a line downward. The claw flicked lightly away, and she flinched: a single barb had bit into her flesh, slicing a clean line down her wrist.

Her eyes pricked with tears as blood trickled to her elbow.

"Hush now," he said, cupping her chin, so that his thick splayed fingers surrounded her neck, curled behind her head. "Shh."

She pictured him wrenching her head from her shoulders, popping it off like a cork from a bottle.

"This is a promise, little thing," he whispered. His thumb pressed into her forearm, and though it pained her, the pressure against the wound was almost soothing. "This means I shall love you forever."

When he lifted his thumb, she saw that the wound had sealed, leaving only the fine, white ridge of a scar.

"We are even," he purred, releasing her.

She ran a hand over her arm in silent disbelief.

"You," she said at last. "You're not going to eat me?"

His terrible grin shimmered wetly in the dark.

Her eyes drifted briefly behind him, searching for exits. In the darkness beyond she glimpsed black pools and spatters of blood. There was nothing else, save for the fallen swords, to show that the Templars had ever been there.

"Your village," he said delicately. "You said it was nearby, little thing?"

She met his terrible eyes again and nodded.

"I see. And your mother waits for you there. As do your brother, and sister — a lovely young mage, much like yourself?"

A thick bead of saliva had gelled at the point of a long, yellow fang, and dangled there precariously.

She nodded again. A knot of fear blocked her throat like a gag.

"Bethany," he said. The bead of saliva dripped, slapping wetly at her feet.

Hawke clutched her wrist, as though he'd burned her there.

"I will take you to them," he said. "I would love an introduction."

She opened her mouth to speak, to say anything, what it was or even could be she did not know. But he scooped her up again, easily, cradling her to his chest. He took off, racing through the cave as though he knew its vesicular pathways by heart, and when they burst free from its rocky mouth the cool air of morning kissed her cheeks.

"I don't know where to go," she stammered, clinging to his chest. The close-crowding foliage of the Wilds swayed with a deceptive benevolence in this gentle light.

"Do not worry, little thing," he said. "Your thoughts will guide me. Simply let me in."

"I don't understand —"

The Veil ripped open wide at his beckoning hand.

She shuddered against his arm. It was as though she'd been plunged into an icy waterfall, a churning vortex, and she lost all sense of direction, falling upward, twisting back. Her senses lurched, confused, disoriented, she tasted sight and glimpsed sound in twitching shapes. Her surroundings shivered, melted, reformed. And Hunger continued onward, a native being in this alien place.

The Fade. Her mother had spoken of it, weaved tales of this dream-realm where demons walked and nightmares became real. She felt then the sharp tug of an invisible thread, much like the one that had connected her and Ser Clerval in the open field, and she knew it was Hunger who pulled it now, drawing from her the memory of her home, of her mother and Carver and Bethany asleep in their beds, soon to rise with the gentle morning.

Her breath caught, sharp as a blade. There was Lothering in the distance, emerging from the very matter of this place.

She shouted it before she even knew what she was doing.

"Stop!"

He paused then, drifting to a halt in the dizzying, shifting air. She twisted about in his grip.

"Please don't," she said.

"Why, little thing," he said, his tone a mockery of surprise, "do you not wish to go home?"

"You'll hurt them," she whispered.

He stroked her head then, plaintively.

"Don't," she said. "Please. I — I helped you, didn't I?"

"And I returned the favor," he said simply.

"I didn't want them to — to —" Her voice broke, sickened now to be so close to him, to be pressed against that hard, engorged stomach.

"To die?" He cocked his head. "I recall you feeling differently, little thing. My very deepest apologies."

His great fingers were sliding along her cheek, wrapping about her shoulders, drifting down her spine, forever touching her.

"Ah," he said, in a lowing rumble. "You are so — very soft."

She was gripped, then, by a deep sense of alarm, a sudden panic that commanded her to shove free of his touch, to plunge into the unknowing abyss of the Fade, if only to put that much distance between herself and this creature.

But Lothering was in sight, there on that shimmering horizon, and she was not going to leave him now, not for the world.

"My mum told me a story once," she said slowly, carefully, so as to eliminate the quaver in her voice.

He leaned toward her expectantly.

"It was a bedtime story. About a little girl who was selfish. She wanted a pretty bracelet that belonged to another girl. Her friend. And a demon came along because she was so, so jealous. He offered her a diadem," and she stuttered here, tripping over the difficult word, "all covered in jewels, to make her happy. But she wasn't happy — it wasn't the bracelet she wanted so much. And the other girl wore it all the time, showing it to everyone who would look, and the demon saw how angry this made her, so he offered her a bracelet this time, an exact copy of the one she wanted so."

Hunger listened intently.

She paused for breath, trying to bide her time. "But she threw it back at him," she said. "It doesn't sparkle the same, she shouted. The gold isn't as shiny. The gems aren't as round. It wasn't the same, not if it wasn't the very bracelet that hung around her friend's wrist.

"And so one day, one day when the two girls were playing by the river, the demon came along again. He snatched the girl's friend right off her feet and swallowed her whole, just like that, and then he reached down his throat and rummaged around, plucking out the sparkling, shiny bracelet, and he offered it to the selfish little girl."

"And she took it?" Hunger guessed.

Hawke shook her head. "She was horrified. She could hear her friend crying and crying inside the demon's stomach, begging to be let out, and she wouldn't take the bracelet. He asked her, is this not what you wanted? This exact treasure, this shiny gold trinket? But the little girl said, I don't want it anymore. I want you to let her out.

"But the demon was troubled. After I have done so much for you, he said, and brought you just what you asked, you still ask me for more? Because the demon was hungry, and he did not want to give her up, not for nothing. And the little girl realized at last where her selfishness had gotten her."

Hunger smiled.

"Take me, the little girl said. Take me in her place, and never bother her again. And so the demon did — he reached down his throat and plucked out her friend, and then he swallowed the little girl whole, leaving the bracelet, and he went back to the Fade, satisfied."

"A fine story," Hunger said. "A good lesson to learn."

Hawke glanced behind her. The image of Lothering glistened, shimmered like a mirage. She could see the ball of the sun as it rose, the brown chickens strutting by the well, the tireless farmers etching the earth with rusty hoes.

"Take me," she said, scarcely managing a whisper.

"What's that, little thing?"

"I said take me instead," she said, more loudly this time. "Leave Bethany alone. Leave them all alone. My family — the entire village."

"You, for an entire village?" His eyes glistened. "Why should I not get my fill, after whetting my appetite on those wretched Templars?"

"Because." The words caught, and she swallowed hard, tried again. "Because you like me so much. You — you said you loved me, right?"

His gazed seemed to penetrate the very walls of her skull. "Indeed," he said.

"So please," she said. "Please. Take me. Eat me up. Possess me. I don't care. Just don't hurt them."

"Little thing. This is not a proposal to make lightly."

She remembered Ser Clerval's warning. She saw his blue eyes, sad and kind.

"I know," she said. "This is what I want."

The heat rose in him then, swelling from the rise of his belly, and she knew now that this meant pure joy, ecstasy which grew from the unending hunger which drove him and sustained him and made him real.

"You have tempted me," he breathed, "greatly, my dear. For no demon can turn down such a deal if a mortal comes so willingly."

But she was not willing. The panic had returned, a strident alarm ringing in her ears, a rabbit-like instinct to flee, to hide, to save herself. She did not want this. She did not, oh, she did not — not while he leered at her so, while his teeth dripped and salivated, not while Ser Clerval and the other Templars swirled in the vortex of his guts.

"Take me," she said, "and leave them alone."

A shiver ran through him, sudden and violent. He stroked her head again, lovingly.

"So be it," he whispered, the susurration of his voice barely penetrating the shivering clench of his saber-like teeth.

#

She awoke to the sound of her mother's voice, the grittiness of dirt in her mouth. Her eyes jerked open. Her mother's strong arms were wrapping around her. She felt the cold press of soil oozing against her cheek, her bare arms and legs, wetting her dress. Her mother was lifting her now, repeating her name, and it took a few moments more for Hawke to realize that she was lying facedown in the field.

"Oh Marian, sweet girl, stupid girl," her mother gasped, clapping her daughter into her bosom. Hawke saw that she was crying. "Oh, where have you been?"

Hawke's mouth moved, her throat struggled for words, but none came. Tears of her own sprang to her eyes. She threw her arms around her mother's neck, nearly wringing it in her embrace. She cried then, a child who was not prone to crying, and smeared her running nose in her mother's hair, oh, the soft sweet scent of her hair. And as her mother carried her home, too stunned by this sentimental display to chide her further, Hawke thought for a few blissful seconds that it had all been a dream, yes, surely it had been, surely she'd fallen asleep in the field and dreamed it all up.

But as she lifted her arm to wipe her tears, she saw the scar on her wrist, fine and white and shining, as real and permanent now as the memory of Ser Clerval's unfortunate end.


	4. Chapter 4

Hunger  
_by rubypop_  
Chapter 4

Fenris had not expected ever to return to the mansion, and as he climbed the stairs to the sitting room he felt in the air a wrongness, a sense of invasion.

He shook his head as though to dispel the notion. His greatsword, newly-recovered, rocked against his back. At last he had rid himself of a bothersome sense of vulnerability, having picked his way to that loathsome cave on the Wounded Coast to gather his affects. He'd found them covered in sand but otherwise no worse for wear, and returned to the manor for a grindstone, a change of clothes, and a meditative session with a cask of wine.

"I don't keep wine or spirits here," Anders had said when Fenris had begun rifling through the clinic larder at a particularly galling part of his tale.

When he'd glared, Anders shook his head. "With Justice I must make — compromises." Then he'd added, delicately, "Besides, I think wine is the last thing you need, all things considered."

Blood and shit, he'd wanted to fire back, but Anders had continued on then, somewhat hurriedly.

He avoided the sitting room itself, the green crushed glass and gilded couches, and went first to the wine rack in the east wing, where one bottle remained.

This he nursed as he paced to and fro, turning over Anders's story in his mind. To have seen the demon itself, to have been utterly useless as it seized her, as she'd gone willingly, to spare him — it brought the disgust roaring to his throat like bile. But could he have stopped it, carried her from that place, convinced her not to go? If he had not been so weak, weaponless, befuddled by Justice's methods . . . if Anders had kept the vengeful spirit in check, if he had not gone to the Wounded Coast, if she had not come to the mansion that night . . .

His fist clenched, ignited, the claw tips sliced his palm, he turned and struck the wall, again, the wine rack rattled, the crack of plaster and wood paneling echoed, he struck it again until he'd put his very fist through the wall.

He swore, loudly, in Tevinter, and withdrew his hand, scattering splinters.

He threw back his head and wine roared down his throat. He paced from the room and his gait was loping and stiff with rage.

He crossed to the bedchamber and the door was open, and he had not left it this way, no, he had not.

He swayed in the doorway, hesitating. He took a lengthy pull of wine, paused, finished the bottle.

He went to the bed where it had happened.

And there was blood. Old blood, a pool of it, congealed thickly in the twisted sheets, dark and moist and rich with the smell of her, he knew it instantly, yes, she'd summoned it here, her demon benefactor, in the very bed where he'd taken her with such violence, on these sheets onto which he'd lurched back from her and spilled his seed.

He felt like laughing, an increasingly familiar symptom of his own drunkenness, this propensity for laughter at that which horrified him.

He backed up again and sagged against the door frame, surrendering to it, the ghastly barrage of laughter that issued from him with little warning.

"Where did it take you?" he inquired of the bed, the bloodied sheets, the remaining essence of her that lingered here. He slid to the floor now, crippled by laughter, and wiped away tears, chuckling with a sort of madness.

"Where did you go?" he called out, into the silence of this place.

And in the folds of the sheets he saw it, the smallest token, rough carved wood, sealed to the bed with her blood.

#

How it galled him, for Anders to see Fenris in his clinic, to tell him those deeply-guarded secrets of the woman he had harmed, to watch him leave unscathed with promises to return. Anders's very nerves screamed to stop him, his teeth clenching until his jaw throbbed, and he indulged now in the solitude of the clinic, seeing the split throat now not with guilt but longing, and his bewilderment returned with an intensity that bordered on anger. What has happened, he wondered, what did he do to her, to cause her to stop me? To drive her to such lengths, to give herself willingly now to the demon that has tormented her so?

Hunger. He knew its name, knew how terribly she grappled with it, despite how little she would tell him. But those mornings when she would awaken in a wan pallor, the long silences and listless stares — he knew, always, when the demon had come. And he'd begged her countless times to tell him, it tortured him not to know what she suffered, whether or not she'd spent those nights beside him, in his arms, simultaneously trapped in the Fade, in Hunger's embrace. And now, it had taken her from him, and she had gone with it, gone away with it . . . where?

He leapt up, he paced, he could not stay still.

Though his mind raced, he sensed a conspicuous absence. Justice had grown quiet since his banishment in the cave, and Anders only sensed him momentarily now, wordlessly, could only guess at the spirit's demeanor in those minor flashes of emotion that were not his own. Anders welcomed this silence, savoring the illusion of being alone.

But then, there was another voice now in his head, Fenris's, his words repeating, over and over.

"I have seen the marks on her body."

"This was no secret she kept from you."

"You know, you have known, and you've done nothing."

"She'd courted it. It kissed her, touched her."

To find out this way, for Fenris of all people to confirm his suspicions, his worst fears — he was so consumed now by jealousy and greed that it shocked him. He loved her, she knew this, and he scolded himself repeatedly to banish these thoughts, this possessive reflex that twisted his guts with fury.

Focus, he urged himself. Focus on finding her. But where to start? Where to even begin?

The air in the clinic was stagnant to him now, it was all close, much too close, he could not rid himself of this anger, the images he'd conjured of her at this demon's mercy, no, how could it be true, how could this cruelty be a reality now?

He rushed for the door, flung it open, for he could stand this place no longer.

He nearly tripped over a small form that lay curled in his doorway. He stumbled just in time, falling against the door frame, and the figure sat up with a surprised jerk. He saw a lovely face, torn rags, mud-caked hair. Two hooded eyes growing large with fear.

He stood staring at her as she scrambled to her feet, this beggar-girl who had returned to the clinic to sleep at his front door.

In her rush, she had kicked over a tin cup, and it skittered off the doorstep with the clatter of small coins. She dropped again to the ground, scooping the loose coppers back into the cup.

Anders knelt beside her, and they nearly knocked heads when she turned to snatch a rolling coin. She withdrew again, shyly, and he plucked the remaining coins from the dirt, and offered them to her.

She averted her eyes as she took them, a reflex that reminded him of a chastened child, and this broke his heart in some way.

She looked much the same as when she'd left the clinic, freshly-scrubbed, though a fine layer of dust had settled on her face, crusted the edges of her fingernails. She rifled through the tin cup now with fingers as thin and pointed as bird talons, and she held out a handful of coins, glancing back at the clinic door.

He looked at the coins, then back at her, and gently pushed her hand away. He sensed a slight twitch where he touched her, a minute jump in her skin that might have been a flinch. She pleaded with him, urging the coins toward him again, and he took her hand now, curling her dirty fingers over the coins.

He stood then, drawing her up with him, cupping her hands in his own. He opened the clinic door and led her inside, shutting it behind them.

Justice shifted within him.

He left her at the door. In his mind there was buzzing noise, the hum of insects, the hush of ocean waves. He shook out a bedroll with movements that were rigid and automatic. He lit a lamp and set it on the floor. When he turned back she was still there, clutching the bent cup with one hand, holding closed the shredded fabric of her tattered dress with the other.

He went back to her and took the cup. He led her to the bedroll and set the cup beside the lamp. She crawled onto the bed gratefully and closed her eyes. She was smiling.

He lingered, thought better of it, went to the back room and parted the curtain. He took a deep breath.

He prepared for bed, though he knew that sleep was not forthcoming, would be all but impossible with these feverish thoughts in his brain. He hung his heavy surcoat on a peg by the door. He unlaced his boots and lined them up beneath the bed. He went back to the curtain and peered out.

She had turned over on the bedroll, was staring back at him across the room. She did not avert her eyes as she had done before.

She was pushing herself up on one arm as he crossed the room to her. With her other hand she reached for him, and he knelt over her, weaving his fingers into her hair. Mud flaked onto his hand. Her arm circled his shoulders, it was slight and bony and sharp. When he kissed her it was as though he were the starving one, and he tasted her deeply, the rancid sweetness of her lovely mouth.

He yanked open her tattered dress, more forcefully than he'd meant to, and here she hesitated, pulling away, but he drew her back gently, smoothing her cheek, caressing her neck. He allowed her timid fingers to pull the shirt over his head as a sign of trust, acquiescence. And then he drove his hand into her hair again, dragging her head back, kissing her, devouring her.

He explored her body, took his time to feel along each protruding rib, run his fingers over the hollows in her arms, her throat, her thighs. He stroked the ridges of her sternum with his tongue, and there he tasted the destitution and poverty that was Darktown, the filth and wanting and sickness and pain, it was all there in her bird-like limbs, the caverns of her eyes.

In this moment he wanted nothing more now than to lift up the entirety of Darktown, to take them from these slime-clotted gutters and stifling hunger, to save them all. And in yielding to her touch, the wetness of her mouth, he felt as though he could give of himself utterly, sustain any who sought his aid, until no part of him was left at all.

When she took him into her mouth he was harder than flint, harder than he'd ever felt, and he cradled her head, urging himself to be gentle, to take time. She was a precious gift, this lovely beggar, kicked down by a world that cared nothing for her, and he reveled in her delicacy, the earnest lapping of her tongue.

I will protect you, he thought. I will save you.

#

Fenris sprinted through Darktown. In spite of his inebriation, the way ahead was clear. He clutched the horse figurine against his palm, that hateful totem soaked in blood, her blood, and he knew that this was the key to finding her, surely she'd left it behind knowing he would discover it.

He knew, though it loathed him, that only a mage had any hope to uncover its secrets, and he hastened now to the clinic. He could not wait until morning, not while Hawke lay trapped in some distant elsewhere, not while his stomach now boiled with purple wine.

He came upon the clinic entrance, and as the knob turned in his hand he heard a voice, a short soft moan that trickled out from behind the door.

He stopped dead. He wavered at the door, confusion rippling raw through the clarity that had brought him here. He listened a moment longer, swaying. Then he pushed open the door, just barely.

He saw two bodies locked in a fevered embrace, there in the center of the clinic. Grasping hands, the sheen of sweat on entwined limbs.

He stared.

#

Anders lifted his head from her, his eyes fluttered, he gasped, kept gasping. Her sharp hands clutched his shoulders, clung to him with a sweet clawing tenacity. The outside world had faded away. There was only her now, and the gentle soft gasps she made with every thrust, his cock an agonizing point of pain to him now, and it was with a certain desperation that he built toward climax, against his every wish to stay buried within her depths forever.

His hands slid down her back, and he gripped her by the hips, his fingers digging into the paltry meat of her backside. Sweat bit and stung his eyes; her mouth gaped; he fucked her now with such brutality that a small part of him feared hurting her, but she urged him on, yes, how beautifully they both suffered for this.

When he came it was sudden and unexpected, and he scarcely had time to shudder away from her, bathing her thigh in the warmth of his seed. He shook momentarily, drunk with orgasm, short of breath, and gave in to it, collapsing on top of her. He held her, heaving into the hollow of her neck, feeling the stickiness of her thigh against his side. As the sensations of the world around him began to return, he thought he heard the soft glide of metal against metal, and he found himself glancing, drunkenly, at the door, but all was as it had been, silent and still.

His heart slowed. He dipped his head to kiss her, and she turned away from him. He sat up, confused.

There was a sudden stiffness in her, a coldness coinciding with the evaporation of heat from the surface of his skin. He crawled off of her. The sweat that had once sealed them together like webbing had grown clammy. She turned over now, tugging on the tatters of her dress. To sit there naked before her became, at once, shameful to him, and he reached for his trousers.

"I'm — sorry," he found himself saying, did not know why he said this, and he was about to continue when the jingle of coins interrupted him.

He saw the cup. She was holding it out, urging it toward him. The sweetness of her face had hollowed into a void.

Words died on his lips. He lifted a hand uselessly, brought it back down. She shook the cup again, as though she were on the street, as though he were a passing stranger.

"I," he stammered.

She cocked her head.

He patted his trousers, flustered, his thoughts, shaken from coitus, would not coalesce. He gestured then, helplessly, not knowing what to do.

She lowered the cup. Her hollow eyes listed away from him, and she rose to her feet. She went to the door, her steps heavy with the weariness of one who had been refused endless times, and disappeared from the clinic.

Justice had not said a word.


	5. Chapter 5

Hunger  
_by rubypop_  
Chapter 5

Flesh. She was wrapped in flesh, pulsing, living swaths of it, pressing close. Veins pounded within, and without there were pores, and fine hairs, and sweat. She could not move. She could see nothing. She hung suspended in this crowd of flesh, her mouth pressed against warm clamminess, awash in the march of blood that traveled some grotesque network of veins.

She could not tell how long she had been here, how long ago he had walled her up in this place. She knew only that he went away sometimes, leaving her for hours, what could be days. It was peculiar to her. She wondered where he would go, what matters he attended to, when he was not here.

Stranger still was how he did not touch her, did not even speak to her in this place. She could only hear his breathing, the great labored heaves of those monstrous lungs, and feel his presence, the unmistakable penetration of his gaze, even through these layers of flesh.

She dreamed, though in dreams she still did not walk freely through the Fade. Anders came to her sometimes, the memory of him swimming through the fever-fog that blotted out her senses. The sight of his face stirred within her a sensuous longing, and she dreamed, often, of sex, of desperate and savage lovemaking that was both real and unreal to her. At times her dreams were reenactments of nights they had spent together, fiery and enraptured when their passions were new, and slow and sweet as the love between them deepened. And then at times her dreams were mere sensation, the clasp of his hands, the heat of his mouth.

It was easy to lose herself in this place, to become one with this teeming mass of flesh — for what was she now beyond a mass of flesh herself, of bone and hair and offal? How simple it would be to join the pulse of these veins, to merge with it at last, like a drop of rain in the sea! Was this, then, her due? Was this what he waited for as he stared at her, unspeaking, while she was awake, while she was not haunted by these memories of the man that she loved?

In her solitude, she was exhausted beyond the need to despair.

But the memories remained. Some kernel of strength germinated within. Anders's face, his body, his touch. She would forget it all if she ceased to exist now, damning it to the Void, dissolving the very reality of her life as she had lived it.

And so in her solitude she reached out and touched it, that kernel of strength, and grasped, and as she hung imprisoned Marian Hawke thought about her life, refusing to release her very memories from that grasp.

#

For a time there was only the passing of years since that promise made deep in the Fade. Hawke carried on with the passage of winter, of many winters, spring and summer, and before long Ser Clerval's prediction came to fruition: in just a few short years, she was a woman.

She'd sensed the changes in her body before they came, before her menarche ushered in the curving of her hips and the swelling of her breasts, and a womanly lilt added melody to her voice. She knew, from her mother's advice, that this was a time of maturation, of doing away with childlike things, but to Hawke her childhood seemed as distant and unreachable as the lustrous fruit of goldberries.

As her flesh shifted and filled out, as she endured this years-long state of flux, of little endings and beginnings, the fine white scar on her wrist remained — a relic of the past, faded and ever-present.

She began to notice men. Their lingering glances, the breadth of their shoulders, the grit of a stubbled jaw. She found herself dallying by the Chantry if only to glimpse the Templars on their patrol, a thrilling act noticed by her mother and for which she was reprimanded, repeatedly.

She knew before long that she desired them. She could not say why. She could scarcely describe the feeling, the tightening heat between her legs, the instinct to touch, to be touched, by these men who hunted her kind, who at times made sport of hunting, of shackling those who dared not resist and slaying those who did. At times, she hated them; at times, she desired them; and, in her most private moments, she remembered Ser Clerval, his kind eyes, the heaviness of his hand upon her head as he questioned her by the brook.

She considered the familiarity of her own arousal, the all-too-real memory of Hunger's shuddering ecstasy, the hot press of his engorged stomach. For the first time she had felt it then, as it radiated from him: pure, exquisite arousal.

But it had been years since that night. The hunger demon was, for now, just a memory, and though she may wonder when he might come to collect, she simply could not know.

Life continued on. Winter, spring, summer. Hawke was a woman with her own desires. She took particular notice of Timothy, a friend of her brother, and they exchanged shy glances whenever they crossed paths, shy glances that gave way to wandering eyes, secretive smiles, an accidental brush of the fingertips. Often she would watch him till the field, enamored by his sun-browned shoulders, the tendons of his arms pulled taut with the turning of the soil.

There was a particular afternoon, when the summertime sun scorched the sky white, that she went out into the field, her mind filled with daring questions, coy propositions, nervous chitchat. Timothy had strayed from the budding crops to a trough of water just out of sight. When she approached him, an arc of water caught the light and glittered against his beckoning hand. She sucked in her breath; there he stood, drawing water from the trough with nothing but a gesture.

"You're a mage," she said at once, and he spun about, startled, so that the tendril of water slapped to the ground.

They stared at one another then, and in his gaze flashed a familiar hint of fear, and she, flustered, blurted an apology, her cheeks burning like coals.

"I just — I didn't —" she said. "I had no idea —"

She stopped short. His face softened. And he began to laugh, his relief palpable, and she laughed as well, laughed until she ached, and he took her hand then and pulled her close, for he knew that she too was a mage, had known for some time, and a bolt of warmth burrowed through her at the closeness of their mouths, the sweat-salt aroma of his naked chest.

She kissed him because she could suffer nothing else, because she wanted him now, indubitably, as she had never wanted anything. And how sweet it was to fulfill this desire, for his lips to cleave as hungrily as her own, and they clung to one another beneath the summertime sun, gasping, exploring, desperate for one another.

Together they sought privacy. Hawke, unaccustomed to the drunkenness of such bliss, drew him beyond the fields to the brook, across the water to a cave, seeking, without thinking why, the black depths of those places within the earth.

They hid where the sun was weak, nestled within an inlet of folded rock. Timothy's hands, so steady with the spade, were fumbling and nervous, and this admission of inexperience touched her, matched her own. He undressed her with a reverent awe, and she blushed again as the cool darkness met her white shoulders, her bare breasts. Gently he cupped her breast, and, oh, the sensation of his moving fingers, the slickness of his tongue against the bud of her nipple. She nearly cringed away, and he drew back, glancing askance, but she urged him on.

He groped for the laces at his trousers, but she stopped him, surprised at the huskiness of her own voice.

"Let me."

Her little hand reached. She pulled the leather laces free, her fingertips grazing the hardness of him. Her pulse quickened as she drew it out, this secret part of him, handling it delicately as though it were glass, and she ran her hand over its length, marveling at the sheer heat of him, and then her mind flashed at once to Hunger's hot fevered flesh, the similarity of his dark genitals, which she'd somehow felt she should not have seen, and dread curdled in the pit of her stomach.

He pulled her closer then and she banished the thought, for his fingers were following the curve of her backside, and he lifted her just slightly, so that the smooth stiff head of his penis pressed against the cleft of her sex, and her eyes opened wide and closed again.

With some urging he eased inside of her, and farther he pushed, farther and farther, as they both held their breath, until he exhaled again, shaking. And for a moment they both simply stood there, as though uncertain of how to continue, she with one leg locked around him, he with his back to the rocky wall. And she began to move against him, just slightly, until he met her rhythm, and she felt a sensation of opening, of some deep expanding warmth, a heat that seemed to grow, push by push, from her very blood.

There was pain, and a sweetness to this pain, a catharsis in the roughness with which he bucked against her now — and yes, she reveled in its violence, the pleasure in his ceaseless grip, the blossoming bruises, the warm line of blood that dripped down her thigh.

She knew, could tell quite suddenly, that it would all be over soon, as he began to shudder and gasp, and it was too much for her, the thought of it ending, and she lashed her arms about his shoulders and whispered, "Wait, wait."

He slowed. She shut her eyes and pressed her cheek to his, slick to the touch and lovingly hot, as though he were not well, a though neither of them were.

And he slowed, until he stopped altogether, inert against the rocky wall, and she said, "Go on," and he did not move, did not even breathe.

She drew back.

Timothy was staring. With wild eyes he stared through her, past her, his lips agape. His sun-browned complexion waxen and sickly and bloodless.

"Timothy?" she whispered.

She could have missed it, the whimper that escaped him.

She disengaged from him with a cold wetness, and as he slid from her there was the faintest aroma of blood, and she turned.

Eyes like two lights. Heaving cragged muscle. Daggers of yellow teeth, clenching and dripping and unclenching again.

She uttered his name without thinking.

Timothy thrust her against the sharp points of the wall, pushing in front of her, and in a ludicrous moment of self-awareness he yanked up his trousers and looked back, repeating what she'd said with bewilderment:

"Hunger?"

She opened her mouth and closed it again.

She saw the barbed claws descend over Timothy's head, the wretched fingers splaying. The serrated grin stretching wide.

His voice thundered from the walls, from the ground, from the depths of her brain where fear had burrowed with claws and teeth.

"KEEP AWAY FROM HER."

The claws snapped around Timothy's head, and he let out a muffled scream as Hunger plucked him off his feet. He went as easily as a paper doll, and Hunger held him aloft as he squirmed and kicked.

"Hunger, no —"

"You would let this. Little whelp. TAKE YOU?" The cave itself seemed to shudder, threatening to collapse, to bury them all.

"I —"

"YOU. BELONG. TO. ME."

His great fist was tightening, and Timothy clawed at the smallest of the gnarled fingers, his cries blotted out.

"YOU. ARE. MINE." And he released his grip then, seizing Timothy round the waist, and his jaws opened like a chasm, she saw the long dark tongue, the abyss of his throat, wet and shining, and she saw then Ser Clerval's face vanishing behind those teeth.

She sprang forward, reaching out.

The points of his teeth met Timothy's back, his chest.

She saw Ser Clerval plunging down that bottomless throat.

"Enough!" she screamed, it was all she could think of doing. "Enough! I am yours, that's the promise we made! Stop, stop this!"

She clutched the crook of his elbow as though her strength alone would give him pause, and his eyes settled upon her face, his hand poised in the air, as Timothy hung, paralyzed by shock, with his head at the back of Hunger's throat.

"You will release him," Hawke said, fighting the tremor from her voice.

They stared at one another, there in the cave where the sunlight was weak. A long rope of saliva bobbed from his razored fang. It collected at Timothy's shoulder and oozed down his arm.

Like a steel trap being pried apart, Hunger's jaws opened, parting so slowly that Hawke feared they would snap together again, surely he was toying with her. But his great arm moved beneath her hands, and he lowered Timothy, lacerated and bleeding, to her feet.

The boy's face was bone-white, and he seemed unable to move, sitting dumbly on the cavern floor. And next without so much as a glance he bolted from them, stumbling around a bend to the cave entrance, and he was gone.

Hawke heard, now, the heavy cadence of Hunger's breathing.

She knelt, very carefully, and collected her dress from the ground. She dared not look at him.

"You would command me?" the demon hissed.

She covered herself. Her flesh was clammy and cold and trembling. She raised her head.

"Punish me, then," she said. "Me. And only me. No one else."

The blank eyes seared the space between them. The black flanks heaved.

"You promised you would spare them," she said. "The whole village. That was our contract."

"And you promised yourself to me."

"You," she uttered, stopped, began again. "You have not claimed me."

Her voice broke.

Hunger's words were thick. "As he claimed you?"

She shook her head, stepped away, kept shaking it.

"No," she said.

A long hiss, as though from a great quantity of air, escaped him. He moved toward her.

She held his gaze. She did not back away. There was nothing but the sheer wall of folded rock behind her.

He reached.

For the first time in nearly a decade, Hawke was face-to-face with the barbed claws. She saw the fine stinger-like points, the hair-thin edges that caught flesh, and ripped, and shredded.

"Little thing," he breathed.

He touched her face. His palm burned against her cheek. His fingers curling around her scalp. His claws moving deftly through her hair.

"I don't want this," she whispered.

He was changing. Shifting form, shape and shade, without her quite understanding it, without her ever seeing how, or why. The great teeth receding. The flesh glossy and smooth. The startlingly human-like face.

The cavity of his stomach. The dark genitals.

"I don't want you to touch me," she whispered.

He cocked his head to the side. The pad of his thumb caressed her jaw.

"I don't care," he said.

"Timothy. Timothy will tell them everything," she said. "They will know. They will all know about you. They will come for me."

"They will not," he said. He moved closer.

"He knows that I've. Dealt with you. He will tell the Templars."

"He will not."

"You can't face them all. They'll take me. You will lose me forever."

He kissed her.

Her fingernails ground into the knot of her dress. His lips were smooth, jarringly soft. She felt the press of long teeth, the inquisition of his pointed tongue. The whisper of his claws at her throat.

"Open your mouth," he said.

The pinch of barbs in her skin.

She parted her lips. His long, wet tongue slid inside, pushing and probing. She tasted many things: blood, old and new; salt, and a rotten liquory sweetness; and the impression of something deeper, something that worried her just as much as the hand that slipped from her skull to her spine, the barbs that bit like shallow thorns.

A long finger touched her inner thigh and a jolt shot through her. Before she knew what she was doing she'd seized his arm to force it back, and he locked eyes with her without moving, his claw poised at her leg.

She was sweating profusely. Touching him was like laying hands on a hot kettle, a smoking iron. She blinked droplets from her eyes as she stared him down. His other hand lifted. He pressed her against the rocky wall. He licked the beads of sweat from her lip. He shuddered once, again. Kissing her.

His claw moved against her thigh. He traced the thin line of blood that had collected there. His finger gliding up, and up. She shut her eyes.

"I had never tasted you before now," he murmured against her mouth.

She held her breath.

"Look at me, little thing."

She whispered a prayer.

"Look. At. Me."

She opened her eyes.

His finger had paused at the top of her leg. She cringed as the point of his claw sank into her flesh. And then another. And another. She cried out in shock, though she hadn't meant to, and he leaned in close, his lip pulling back in a sneer.

"My, but I love you," he breathed.

He sank five more claws into the meat of her other leg. She lurched against the wall. Unable to tear her eyes away from his unblinking gaze.

"This means I shall love you forever," he said.

His claws raked down her thighs. The barbs caught and tore. Her knees buckled. She staggered. His hands anchoring against ten tracks of pain.

She grew light-headed. Reeling. She glimpsed the slit white flesh of her legs. The blood that at first only seeped, welling in ruby clusters, and then broke in gushing streams to spatter around her feet.

Hunger released her and she collapsed.

She slumped against a boulder, her legs splayed as though she did not know how to use them, as though she were a puppet with snipped strings. She saw in those ten cuts the layers of her body, the beleaguered muscle and soft fat. Her little hands lifted, supplicant, and fell again.

Hunger grinned.

"Do it, little thing," he said.

She stared at him with glassy eyes.

"Use your gift," he purred.

He gestured. To her legs, her wounds, the pools of blood. To her nakedness. To the draining color of her face. To the depleting network of veins that ran the length of her body.

She mouthed it once, before her voice crept weakly into her words. "My gift?"

He nodded, once.

Her heartbeat was thunder. Deafening thunder that flooded her head. Drowned out her thoughts. Filled her hours, her minutes, these last few precious seconds, here in this cave where she lay trapped with a monster.

He gestured again, moving closer.

Her arm lifted. It gestured too, in unison with his.

Her heartbeat quickened.

She followed his lead, without choosing to, as he traced a glyph into the floor, and she did so in the pooling blood, stirring it with a whisper, a cryptic language that she did not know, had never heard before, that spilled easily from her lips in time with his. He leaned over her and took her hands, and she could feel the blood heating, stirring up, nearly frothing against her legs.

Together they whispered an incantation. Sealing it forever in the vessels of her brain.

He pressed her hands to her legs.

The blood stirred. It rose from the floor in glistering drops. It arced in a luminous stream. Circling her.

Hunger pushed. He dragged her hands against her thighs. The blood flashed downward. It struck her trembling fingers. It refilled the severed veins. She cowered back, and Hunger held her hands steady until they reached her knees, and all traces of the blood had left, had been restored, and she crumpled against the boulder as the pads of his fingers ran the length of her wounds.

"Your gift," he whispered.

Her eyelids fluttering. Her breath shallow.

"Little thing," he whispered.

He kissed her thighs, first one and then the other, where only ten long scars remained, knotted and jagged and new. And then he left her, melting away into the shadows, as she sank into the depths of unconsciousness on the cavern floor.

#

She wandered from the cave in darkness. Scarcely aware of the brook that swirled at her ankles. Her dress clinging like a second skin.

She could make out only impressions, the blurred bobbing torches at the village gate, the dark forms of the Templars flickering like specters on patrol. She trembled. She knew her eyes must be like clouded glass, wide and staring. She stepped carefully. She looked at no one.

She did not see the carriage until she was nearly upon it. She stepped back as the Chantry sigil engraved in its side came into view. She backed away, though the Templars milling about merely glanced at her.

A pair of eyes stared out from the barred window.

She leaned against a fencepost. Her lips forming his name.

There was no response in his face. No twinge of recognition. Timothy stared back at her impassively. And she knew at once that he had no idea who she was.

She slid back against the fence. Her feet dragged through the damp grass. She circled around her mother's home and eased open the back door. Her blood roaring in her ears.

Carver was slumped against the kitchen table. His tear-streaked face illuminated by the hearth. Their mother embracing him, whispering words of comfort.

She stopped dead when she noticed Hawke in the doorway.

"Marian," she said, rising at once. "What happened?"

Hawke blinked slowly. She looked from her mother to Carver.

"Marian," her mother said.

"What happened," Hawke repeated.

Carver slammed his fists against the table. He lurched to his feet and seized his chair, flinging it down.

"Carver!" their mother cried.

He tore from the room.

Hawke watched him go. She turned back to her mother, who hefted the chair from the floor and sank into it.

"What happened to Timothy," Hawke said.

Her mother shook her head. She wiped her mouth and grew still, her eyes searching Hawke's face.

"He went to the Templars," she said.

The roar of blood in Hawke's ears cut off. She did not breathe.

"He was gibbering about a demon," her mother said. "No one could understand him. He . . ."

Hawke shut her eyes.

"He asked for the Rite of Tranquility."

She pictured his empty gaze. The shadow of bars across his face.

"Marian."

She held herself.

"Marian. It's been hours. Where were you?"

Hawke opened her eyes. She stared at her mother.

"Why," she said.

She sensed the faintest intake of breath from her mother.

"Where?" her mother said again, clearly forcing a note of stability into her voice. "Where were you?"

Hawke drifted past her. She went silently to the staircase, and she emptied her mind of all thought, ascending.


End file.
